Francis Bacon thought of his Essays as “recreation of my other studies” in politics, law, natural philosophy, and science.  First published in 1597 as Essayes: Religious Meditations. Places of Perswasion and Disswasion. Seene and Allowed, the collection was expanded to 38 essays in 1612 and again in 1625 to 58 essays under the title Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall.  The Essays have no logical sequence or theme (ironic for the man who brought method and organization to science) and find their topics in diverse areas, public and private. Bacon had a gift for making catchy phrases, and many expressions still in use are found first in the Essays. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations contains 91 quotations from the Essays. Although the treatments vary in style from the unadorned to the epigrammatic, he invariably covers the topic at hand from all angles in a systematic and considered fashion.  They were well received and so well done that some have thought of Bacon as the originator of the essay form; they clearly stand with the work of Aristotle and Montaigne and have stood the test of time.

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